Graduation Day

As many of you probably already know we run a church based Bible School at Gotesti as a service for not only ourselves but also the work of God here in the South.

This is a Bible School course done part time over 3 years.

Students study such subjects as Galatians and Romans, the Christian life, How to Study the Bible, How to prepare a message, Church Dynamics etc.

There are 4 one week courses in each of 3 years making 12 in total.

The advantage of it is that the students get the standard of both teachers and teaching of a full time Bible School while not having to come out of the work of God that they are in, in their villages and towns.
The course has been produced and sponsored by Entrust4 an international organisation that runs these kinds of courses throughout the world.

On the left of this picture is Harvey Newton, the Entrust4 director for Moldova.

Harvey was a pastor for many years in the USA and is a graduate of Dallas Seminary.

He has been serving in Moldova for around 15yrs.

In the centre of the picture with his graduation certificate is Pastor Ion from Valeni. His church has over 70 members and he is typical of the students that come

to the course, i.e. a pastor who is faithfully and sucessfully pastoring a church but has never had the opportunity to get any training.

Beside Harvey in this picture is Tudor, the youth leader in a church called Hirtop.

Others coming to the school are missionaries working in new villages trying to plant the village with a church.

Of the 5 that finished the course and graduated 3 are pastors and 2 youth leaders in their churhces.

We held the ceremony at Karis Pizza and finshed with a nice meal together.

The next post you will see here is about the new Bible school that has just started 22 March in which we will be sharing the teaching with Harvey and the costs of running the school.

Pastor Mark

Baptism Meeting

On Sunday 14th of March we had a baptism meeting.

These meetings always attract a good turn-out and Sunday was no exception - we estimated there to be 100+ adults in the congregation of 250 that were not yet commited Christians.

There were a large number of people not from our villages but from Badicu, Romanscova, Porumbesti whose churches had brought various ones to baptised as well as guests from Cahul, Cantemir, Chisilea and many other villages and towns who have been bringing people to the Alpha course.

The man being baptised here is called Misa and beside him on the right is Stefan Hanganu, the pastor of Porumbesti.

Misa is in his 60's and has been a Christian for quite a while but had not quite come into the fullness of relationship with God.

After the special day in the course when we meet for a whole day and do studies on the Holy Spirit, Misa said at the end of the day to Stefan.

"It's time I got baptised because I want to be filled with the Spirit"

Don't rush to write to me. He hadn't misunderstood the teaching and wrongly concluded that we were saying that he had to be baptised to received the Spirit. We had been speaking about one of the reasons why we are not filled with the Spirit as we should be is that it's like we have a whole lot of rooms in the house of our souls and although we have invited Jesus into our house\hearts there are maybe some rooms that have remained locked which we don't give Him access to and so we are not filled with the H.S. in these parts of our lives.

He thus understood that he had been holding back from following Jesus's example of getting baptised and on Sunday put that to rights.

We as always preached an evangelistic message - on this occassion taking the life and response of Zacchaeus - Luke 19:1-10.

We gave the opportunity to those present to invite Jesus to come and stay in their houses ( hearts ) as their Lord and saviour as Zacchaeus did and 13 answered the call.

Ten of these 13 were ones that had been coming to the Alpha course and that meant that overall in this course 20+ people have prayed to receive Christ as their Lord and saviour.

We were also delighted that one of those who came out to the front was Vitali ( right of picture).

You may remember him and his situation being in a previous post.

He needed a serious operation on both lungs.

Many of you prayed, God provided and he had a successful operation.

Many of you continued to pray for his salvation and here is taking what we hope is at least a first step to entering into a full relationship with God.

We plan to start some studies with him and his wife Catea next week - she is also seeking. Please pray for them to come fully through.

Thank you for your continued support in so many ways

Yours and HIs

Pastor Mark

Mothering Sunday

Every year in Moldova we have the equivalent of mothering Sunday.

It is actually a day for all ladies, mothers or not and it is celebrated on 8th of March.

We had a special church service on 7th March in recognition of the day and invited families.

There was a good turnout with many new people coming as their children were in the programme

The children also did a lovely programme as always

Here our 7-11 age group did songs and poems and were dressed in red and white which are the significant colours for the 8th March celebration

Meanwhile the youngest group appeared in angels costumes to remind their mothers of exactly what they are not.

Only kidding - they're little darlings really

A lovely touch thought up by the Sunday school teachers was that each child take a flower and find their mother in the congregation and give it to her

Here Rachael is passing her flower onto Mari

Later in the day was the latest installment in our Alpha course.

We are still getting around 60 come each week from all the churches in the region.

There were 12 that gave their lives to Christ the week before and all were at the meeting on 7th March

The subject was "The Church" - we spoke of how new birth brings us into the family of God, the church, and also of the priviledges and responsibilities of being part of the church.

We also looked at baptism and invited them to come the following Sunday at the same time when we were planning to replace the Alpha study with a baptism meeting with 8 candidates due to get baptised from 3 different villages.

Pastor Mark

Ruslan and Larisa's baby

Many of you have been asking how Larisa is getting on and whether the birth of their baby is close.

Well it isn't close, it has been and gone -last Friday, a week early. (It'll be great to have her as a member in the church - to have at least one person early for the meetings)

Here is mum and baby in the hospital. She is such a quiet and contented child we had to smack her to get some reaction - only kidding!!! ( before I get any law suits )

She was 3.7Kg at birth and both she and mum are doing well.

It seems they may be out of hospital after a couple more days.

They haven't decided on a name for her yet.

Watch this space!

Pastor Mark

Thing's don't always go well

Thank you for keeping up with all our blogs and for the many encouraging e mails you send us.

One of the things that often comes up in your e mails is excitement as to how well things are going here and how the Lord is working.

I thought it would make a nice change to mention some of the things that haven't gone so well recently.

This is our storage building beside the church where we keep our wood, our aid, many tools etc

The big snow got to the ancient asbestos roof and in one fell swoop solved all our air conditioning problems. Fortunately the room with the aid in it is at extreme left of picture and the roof didn't come down there. Our men have met to see what is the least expensive way of trying to save our store house but with straw brick walls and now a collapsed roof things are not looking good and a sizeable investment is going to be needed.

Meanwhile, a few days after this happened some thieves took the opportunity, breaking into our tool room in the church store house and stealing several bits of expensive equipment. ( The police caught them 2 days later and we have recovered all - PTL )

Then round about the same time some snow got into our roof space ( we have no idea how ) and when it melted our ceiling swelled with water until we felt we must lance the boil ( see picture ) before the whole ceiling came down on us.
That's a wee job for the Spring when it comes.

Then on Tues our ancient heating system in the church finally gave up the ghost.

The cold weather was just too much for it and 4 radiators sprung leaks as well as several points in the piping system. ( We need a new central heating system)

I'll not mention the cracks creeping up the walls of the church due to dodgy foundations work nor the leak from the roof into the pastor's office.

I remember reading a story of a pastor who was well known for starting his Sunday morning meetings with a prayer of thanksgiving always finding something to thank God for no matter how bad things had been.

One Saturday there was a terrible thunderstorm. In the bad conditions his wife had an accident in the car and she and the kids were injured although not seriously. Just as he got back from the hospital the roof of his house partially collapsed due to the weather conditions so he had to move into temporary accommodation, where the one child who had not been with his mother in the accident contracted a virus as was up most of the night.

When he came to start the service the next day the whole congregation having heard of his trials eagerly awaited his opening prayer to hear what the pastor would find to thank God for in the previous day's disasters.

He began Dear Lord

I thank you that every day in life ..........

is not like yesterday

My sentiments exactly

Pastor Mark

President Basecu comes to town

The newly elected president of Romania came for his first foreign visit in his new mandate to the Republic of Moldova.

He is spending 2 days in Moldova and to-day ( the second after a visit to Chisinau ) he came down South to us.

He is the bald man in the centre of the picture

He visited a war memorial cementry in Tiganca

The South West of Moldova where we live was originally part of Romania and the front lines of battle in WWII were fought around this area with many Romanians being killed and buried in this cementry about 10Km from us in Gotesti.

Many people from our village and other nearby areas braved the -10C temps to turn out to see him.

One of those loyal souls was Suceava girl Mari McCormick. (In fact she had sent an e mail a couple of days ago inviting him to pop in for a coffee at Karis Pizza on his way onwards to Cahul - he didn't, having already been booked into a Restaurant in Cahul )

Here she is posing in front of the car that was transporting Traian Basescu during his time in Moldova. (Not sure the driver would be too happy about this picture of a dirty car.)

Mari came back home sparkling - she'd got to shake his hand and bless him in the name of the Lord and if Mr Basescu has any discernment he'll have gone onto Cahul also sparkling having shaken the hand of my wife.

Pastor Mark

Baptism at Cantemir

On Sunday 17th of January we had the priviledge of being invited to do the worship prigramme and preach at a Baptism service in the church at Cantemir.

I was encouraged that not only I from Gotesti was able to be of service to another church in our region but also our worship group.

We hope that as we are invited to other churhes that we will have formed 2 or 3 worship teams so that I or indeed Ruslan will preach but we will have different worship teams from our church in Gotesti and in Chircani assisting other churhces in this way.

There were 3 candidates for baptism, one of whom was from the church in Hirtop which is also in the Cantemir region.

Dima on the right of picture could not get the smile off his face from start to finish.

Later we preached on Mark 1:15 where we are told Jesus began to preach saying "Repent and believe in the gospel"

We were able to explain that to repent means to turn away from all that you know to be wrong in your life and commit yourself to following God - giving Him ownership of your life. Believing in the gospel we explained means recognising that your sins are worthy of punishment and that

Jesus died on the cross to take your punishment so that believing in Him will get you forgiven and reconciled to God.

When we gave people the opportunity to make this decision to repent and believe one lady from the congregation responded. her name is Diana and she also came to the Alpha course later that evening.

Here, Claudia, one of our worship group is giving her testimony which came across very powerfully on how God works in our hearts to show us what we are really like.

The banner in the background translated says "I can do all things in Christ.."

Under the sign Praise the Lord for He is good we see pastor Volodia and his leaders photographed together with the candidates.

After the meeting we got the opportunity to further talk with various ones who had been touched by God during the meetings.

All in all it was a wonderful occassion to be part of.

Pastor Mark